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My husband and i have been thinking of moving further out to have more land for our children. We are currently working steadily with an agent, although, we dont have a contract signed with her.
Anyhow, i recently had a totally different agent show me a home that i really liked. I have only viewed 3 homes with her and she sends me listings once in awhile.
Question is, can i put an offer on this home with the agent i work with steadily? I may have signed one of those yellow contracts with the different agent prior to viewing the home i liked. I cant remember exactly as it was a few weeks ago.
My husband and i have been thinking of moving further out to have more land for our children. We are currently working steadily with an agent, although, we dont have a contract signed with her.
Anyhow, i recently had a totally different agent show me a home that i really liked. I have only viewed 3 homes with her and she sends me listings once in awhile.
Question is, can i put an offer on this home with the agent i work with steadily? I may have signed one of those yellow contracts with the different agent prior to viewing the home i liked. I cant remember exactly as it was a few weeks ago.
Please familiarize yourself with the concept of procuring cause relating to how real estate agents and their commissions are paid. I have attached something that will clarify the issue. Best of luck as you and your husband proceed with your house hunting.
I am 99% sure what is correct in this situation, but can't find the reference at the moment. Of course any documents you signed would also affect the answer.
More important to me is the ethical situation. Why would you want to cut out the agent who showed you the home? They showed the listing. They didn't do that so you could use another agent to purchase. What would your position be if you were the agent and a buyer cheated you out of your rightful commission? Why did you waste this person's time if you had no intention of working with them?
Whether or not you can loophole out of it, it is wrong... Unless you want to pay a commission to the other agent out of your pocket.
I am 99% sure what is correct in this situation, but can't find the reference at the moment. Of course any documents you signed would also affect the answer.
More important to me is the ethical situation. Why would you want to cut out the agent who showed you the home? They showed the listing. They didn't do that so you could use another agent to purchase. What would your position be if you were the agent and a buyer cheated you out of your rightful commission? Why did you waste this person's time if you had no intention of working with them?
Whether or not you can loophole out of it, it is wrong... Unless you want to pay a commission to the other agent out of your pocket.
I wasnt wasting this agent's time... I had been viewing various homes with different agents as i didnt feel comfortable signing with an agent based on only seeing two homes with them. The agent that i am currently working with has been the only agent to go above and beyond. This home has just been the only home that ive had on my mind and which was viewed very early in my home search. I expressed interest to the agent and didnt receive any follow- up etc. It seemed like she was very busy with other clients. Its only been a month and a half that ive been searching ...
I wasnt wasting this agent's time... I had been viewing various homes with different agents as i didnt feel comfortable signing with an agent based on only seeing two homes with them. The agent that i am currently working with has been the only agent to go above and beyond. This home has just been the only home that ive had on my mind and which was viewed very early in my home search. I expressed interest to the agent and didnt receive any follow- up etc. It seemed like she was very busy with other clients. Its only been a month and a half that ive been searching ...
I didn't mean my post to come across as an attack.
If you didn't want to use agent "B," you shouldn't have gone to see a property with him/her. They found you the property and showed it to you. By any ethical standard, it is their sale. If you wanted to work with agent "A," you should have gone to see the property with them. I'm only pointing out that these people work for a living and their time is money... it is a pretty low move to have one agent show you a home and then go to different agent to make the sale.
I get where you are coming from. I recently worked with an agent who showed me several properties. Didn't like any of them. Then I heard back from another agent on a house we hadn't seen. We ended up buying that house. It was too bad for our agent "a" - she had done a good bit of work for us. Agent "b" just happened to have the one listing that was perfect for us. That's the way it goes... if agent "a" would have shown us the house, she would have had the sale. It doesn't make it right for us to cut out agent "b."
You agent "B" being unresponsive is a problem. By no follow-up do you mean they haven't called you to see if you are interested? Of are they not returning your phone calls where you leave a message wanting to make an offer?
Why don't you do this... call agent "A" and tell them what you wrote here. That you saw a home with agent "b" and want to make an offer using agent "A" to cut agent "B" out of the deal. At least that way, everything is above board. I bet money I know what agent "A" will tell you.
Basically, I'd say you need to dance with the one who brought you. If an agent did the research and brought you to a house, they should be part of the deal. That's what they get paid to do. But I don't know if there's a legal requirement to do so.
We've been looking at houses for a while. The first agent we started using specialized on one area, and told us if we were interested in other areas we'd have to use another agent for that area. So we did. And neither agent developed a good track record of showing us houses that met all of our requirements; no matter how clear were about what we wanted, what were shown were something else.
So we went to open houses and called other agents to see their listings.
The house we finally decided on is one we found and researched, and set up the viewing. And we're using the listing agent for the sale. He was the only one involved.
But I don't know if there's a legal requirement to do so.
Procuring Cause would be the legal concept at play. A good link discussing it was provided earlier in the thread. Specific vary by state - here are some links with NY based examples.
From the examples in these links, it seems highly likely the agent who showed the home would feel he earned the commission and take action to get it. From the scant information we have, I lay odds s/he would win. It is possible that the buyer would incur legal fees to defend the action. If they lose, they could possibly be liable for that commission.
It's not worth it just to try and cheat an agent out of their commission.
There are a few RE agent who regularly post here. I am surprised that none have chimed in yet.
From the examples in these links, it seems highly likely the agent who showed the home would feel he earned the commission and take action to get it.
I don't doubt that they would feel like they had earned it, but if all they did was arrange the initial showing, they may not be entitled to it. From the second link: …A broker does not earn a commission merely by calling the property to the attention of the buyer…
The OP would probably benefit from reaching out to a real estate or contract attorney to see what they can do legally.
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